Urban morphology and critical reconstructions: the case of Friedrichstadt

Friedrichstadt is a neighbourhood of Berlin characterized by an heterogeneous fabric. Its northern sector consists indeed of regular and relatively small blocks with closed perimeter, while in the southern one blocks are bigger and more open to the street. This difference is not much due to the Berlin Wall, which split Friedrichstadt for almost thirty years, but rather is a feature of the district that already emerged along the eighteenth century. At that time, the urban fabric in northern Friedrichstadt resulted from a compact, regular grid, while in the south, where living and agriculture coexisted, blocks were bigger and irregular. Even though both halves of Friedrichstadt were outcomes of baroque planning, the blocks in its southern part resulted from later interventions where priority was given to the search for endless urban perspectives, which a regular grid of small plot would have prevented. A considerable difference within the structure of Friedrichstadt endured until the twentieth century, before the Second World War razed most of the district. With the critical reconstruction of both sectors, conducted in accordance with the historical urban plan, also the gap between their structures was restored. Indeed, the different approaches followed in the reconstruction of southern Friedrichstadt in the eighties, conducted by the Internationale Bauausstellung (IBA), and of both Dorotheenstadt and northern Friedrichstadt in the first half of the nineties, introduced further disparities for their different focuses. While the critical reconstruction of the IBA mostly concentrated on the urban block, the plans of the nineties focused again on the plot, almost ignored by the IBA. The research retraces, considering both bibliographical sources and historical plans, the development of Friedrichstadt and provides a critical retrospective to the approaches of its post-war reconstruction, to clarify the reasons behind a dualism of the neighborhood still perceptible today.